Good ‘Doctor’ revisits ‘Shining’ scares
The Overlook Hotel is still plenty creepy, as is the crusty naked ghost lady in Room 217. But the adaptation of Stephen King‘s “Doctor Sleep” is more likely to keep you awake at night with the fresher stuff than the retreads.
A sequel to “The Shining” – which finds a middle ground between King’s original 1977 novel and Stanley Kubrick’s seminal 1980 movie – “Doctor Sleep” (★★★☆; rated R; in theaters Nov. 8) catches up with Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) decades after his crazed dad tried to kill him at their horrifyingly spooky Colorado lodging.
But while its predecessor was about addiction, writer/director Mike Flanagan’s follow-up interestingly examines the recovery and redemption of a haunted man. That is, when it’s not trying to scare the pants off you with a family of hippie psychic vampires and their villainous matriarch.
While Danny physically survived the trauma of the Overlook, he didn’t escape the phantoms that still want to consume his psychic powers, or “shine.” He finds a way to lock them away, but spends decades trying to suppress his abilities using drugs and alcohol. The adult Dan winds up in New Hampshire, gets sober with the help of a friend (Cliff Curtis) and works at a hospice, where he’s able to use his shine to help terminal patients die comfortably, thus earning the nickname “Doctor Sleep”.
During this time, Dan is also contacted psychically by Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran), a young girl with a stronger shine who reaches out to form a bond with someone like her. But Abra enlists his help after she psychically feels the brutal murder of a boy with similar abilities by a shady, ancient troupe known as the True Knot. Led by the enigmatic Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), they remain semi-immortal by feeding off the psychic essence of children like Abra. (Rose’s recruitment mantra is “Live long, stay young, eat well.”) And when Abra surfaces on their radar, Dan becomes involved in a cross-country cat-and-mouse chase that culminates in a snowy, bring-your-own-ax showdown at the Overlook.
McGregor doesn’t always get props, but he’s a sneakily good actor, and he’s great portraying the “Shining” trauma made real in Dan’s grownup existence. There’s a reluctant heroism, too, that
blends well with Curran, a star in the making, as Dan becomes her psychic Obi-Wan of sorts, the guiding parental figure he lacked as a child.
On the darker side, Ferguson is all vicious excellence as Rose, the freakiest weirdo in a hat since Mister Babadook. King’s rogues gallery is deep, and in a year when Pennywise again got most of the headlines, Rose more than holds her own with a tempting menace and a surprising maternal streak.
Flanagan’s shown a knack for creating a sublimely sinister atmosphere in “Oculus,” “Hush” and especially his Netflix show “The Haunting of Hill House.” And he does so here with the child-hunting shenanigans of the True Knot that lean emotionally brutal, and his recreation of Kubrick’s “Shining” landscape, with the overhead spots and camera, pans over water set to the chilling “Dies Irae” melody.
While the Dan/Abra vs. True Knot adventure is a smidge more effective than the shades of horrors past, it’s still a hoot to see those eerie Grady twins back in the Overlook hallway, the river of blood again flowing out of elevators plus one scene that will have King fans’ jaws fully on the floor.
It’s nothing to go channeling your inner Jack Nicholson and chopping through doors. But Flanagan’s “Doctor Sleep” respects both King’s and Kubrick’s visions while letting a rising horror master go his own way, too.